Description

This project provides for planning and preliminary engineering design for new and reconstructed highway projects, pedestrian facilities, bike facilities, and mass transit projects under consideration for inclusion in the Capital Improvements Program (CIP). Prior to the establishment of a stand-alone project in the CIP, the Department of Transportation will perform Phase I of facility planning, a rigorous planning-level investigation of the following critical project elements: purpose and need; usage forecasts; traffic operational analysis; community, economic, social, environmental, and historic impact analyses; recommended concept design and public participation are considered. At the end of Phase I, the Transportation, Infrastructure, Energy and Environment (T&E) Committee of the County Council reviews the work and determines if the project has the merits to advance to Phase II of facility planning: preliminary (35 percent level of completion) engineering design. In preliminary engineering design, construction plans are developed showing specific and detailed features of the project, from which its impacts and costs can be more accurately assessed. At the completion of Phase II, the County Executive and County Council hold project-specific public hearings to determine if the candidate project merits consideration in the CIP as a funded stand-alone project.

Cost Change

Cost increase due to the addition of two new studies to start in FY15 (Boyds Transit Improvements and Life Sciences Center Loop Trail) and the addition of FY19 and FY20 to this ongoing project (including the MD355 (Clarksburg) Bypass study to start in FY19), offset partially by deferrals of certain studies to the Beyond 6-Years and the deletion of the Clopper Road Dual Bikeway study.

Justification

There is a continuing need to define the scope and determine need, benefits, implementation feasibility, horizontal and vertical alignments, typical sections, impacts, community support/opposition, preliminary costs, and alternatives for master planned transportation recommendations. Facility Planning provides decision makers with reliable information to determine if a master-planned transportation recommendation merits inclusion in the CIP as a stand-alone project. The sidewalk and bikeway projects in Facility Planning specifically address pedestrian needs.

Fiscal Note

Disclosures

A pedestrian impact analysis will be performed during design or is in progress. Expenditures will continue indefinitely. Facility Planning-Transportation (P509337) The Executive asserts that this project conforms to the requirements of relevant local plans, as required by the Maryland Economic Growth, Resource Protection and Planning Act.